I Thought I Hated Pie, Then Fiona’s Chocolate Chess Changed Everything
This is Highly Recommend, a column dedicated to our very opinionated editors’ favorite things to eat, drink, and buy.
There are two kinds of pie I truly lose my dough over: pot and pizza. But try to tempt me with a fat slice of pumpkin or pecan, apple or cherry, and my reaction will always be a solid “meh”—unless there is also ice cream involved, in which case I will just be extremely excited about the ice cream. But the decadent chocolate chess slice I was recently goaded into ordering at Los Angeles’ charming all-day café Fiona is anything but pie-like...which is probably why I fell completely in love with it. Delightfully fudgy and gooey with a shiny, crackly top, the filling was closer in spirit to the boxed brownies my mom would make when I was a kid (the greatest dessert of all time to eight-year-old me) than any pie I’d ever eaten. A big dollop of unsweetened whipped cream on the side is optional, but IMHO is not really optional. And after having eaten so many mediocre pie crusts—tragically underbaked and crispy-gone-soggy in the rare, bad way—I was in no way prepared for pastry queen Nicole Rucker’s take, which flakes into a million crisp, buttery shards at the touch of a fork, the way a well-made croissant does. I polished off my slice and found myself walking out the door...with an entire pie to-go.
